The Last Hurrah for Flash – Or is it?

The most popular, longest-running plug-in that allows a user to stream movies and videos and enjoy interactive content – Adobe’s Flash – is now said to be lingering in its final stages of life. Web developers have been calling for its passing for years now. But recently, the call for putting down Adobe Flash has reached a new fervor pitch.

In fact, an Occupy Flash Movement has been enacted to “rid the world of the Flash Player plugin.” Check it out here: http://occupyflash.org/

Yikes!

How did Flash become the subject of so much animosity when it has been a digital darling since 1998? Well, HTML5 has been the new kid on the block for several years now and web developers tout its advantages – mobile capabilities and semantic markup. Whereas with Flash, the digital community has been complaining about its bugs and berating its slowness for years. Flash has been blamed for frequent crashes in web browsers and has been accused of making computers run aggravatingly slow. Flash has also been suspected to contribute to shorter battery life spans in laptops.

Always a Victim

Things really got hot, when, just last month, Facebook’s chief security VP said it was time for Adobe to put an extinction date on this software. On top of those blunt words, Firefox, the open-source, web browser from Mozilla Foundation, publicly stated it was blocking Flash automatically. (News flash – currently, Flash is now back playing on Firefox after Adobe fixed the notable security issues). Whoa, slow down, what’s happening here?

The Hacking Team Leak

The initiative to kill Flash had significantly heated up when hackers were able to compromise an Italian based spy company in June, 2015, named, get ready, the Hacking Team (ironic name, isn’t it?). Hackers stole 400 gigabytes of data from The Hacking Team’s website, including company secrets, strategies, clientele information, etc., and then dumped it on the web for the world to see and pick at. How did the hackers do it? They leveraged the critical security vulnerabilities in Flash. “The holes in the Flash software could allow someone to remotely take over your computer and infect it with malware” (Flash is back on Firefox, CNN.com).

Read Adobe’s Security Bulletin here: https://helpx.adobe.com/security/products/flash-player/apsa15-04.html

The concern, of course, is that the bad guys can exploit this vulnerability in other sites. Bidding on vulnerabilities unfortunately goes on all the time (“black hats”, criminal organizations, and of course, some government entities do this all the time). That’s why the critical vulnerabilities in Flash could leave a whole lot of people and their businesses severely compromised.

Maybe you?

Killing Flash

There are directions on how to disable Flash but this means then you won’t be able to see the items that require it on some websites. It’s not just pesky advertising that keeps popping up; Flash is also used to load movies and videos. It could also be used for an element in an online shopping cart. It is still widely used and purported to be used on 10% of all websites. But, if you would rather have peace of mind against hackers, it may be best for you to completely disable it.

Should you turn off Adobe Flash in your web browser?

Adobe’s security blog, of courses, addresses the Flash Player’s critical vulnerabilities and recommends users to update their Flash Player to the latest version. The latest versions are 18.0.0.209 (Win and Mac); and 11.2.202.491 (Linux). All users are encouraged to update to these latest versions.

A Very Short History

Adobe Flash Player, otherwise known as simply Flash, is the patriarch of digital animation, debuting first as Macromedia Flash in 1996 with Director and Shockwave as predecessors. Through the years, Flash was further developed to create more sophisticated and complex interfaces such as to display interactive web pages and to play music and video. In 2005, Adobe purchased Macromedia and Flash became a member of Adobe’s Creative Suite family. But as the digital movement became all about playing videos or music faster or easier (think YouTube.com), Flash became the plugin lifeline to all things fun and cool on the digital space. By 2007, YouTube optimized their site to allow mobile phones to upload video, which bypassed the need for Flash. After all, the ubiquitous iPhone is everywhere and Flash was not a part of its technology. Here…slowly but surely…. Flash was losing its stronghold.

Steve Jobs “Thoughts on Flash”

It was back in 2010 when Steve Jobs wrote an open letter to Adobe, offering up six “most important reasons” why Apple was not using Flash on their iPhones, iPods and iPads. He writes: “…the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short…Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript – all open standards.” With HTML5, developers can create games that can work on all devices – that’s good news for mobile gamers.

You can read Jobs letter in its entirety here: http://mashable.com/2010/04/29/steve-jobs-flash-is-no-longer-necessary/

So, how about you? Are you disabling Flash?
Tell us your experience on social media!

Sources
http://money.cnn.com/2015/07/16/technology/flash-firefox/index.html
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Passcode/Passcode-Voices/2015/0717/Opinion-Hacking-Team-breach-a-gold-mine-for-criminal-hackers
http://www.theverge.com/2015/7/8/8911077/adobe-flash-hacking-team-vulnerability
http://thenextweb.com/dd/2014/04/19/rip-flash-html5-will-take-video-web-year/